Image: Stop The War poster

If you've been
keeping up with online independent media, you will have
noticed the lack of balanced information about the attacks
in Afghanistan coming through New Zealand TV, radio and
print mass media sources.

To attempt to get some
information out to others who might need it, Warren Olds and
myself have created a poster summarising some key issues
from online news sources. The poster looks roughly like the
one attached (colour not identical). The body copy appears
at the end of this message..

The poster will be A2 format,
probably 2-colour (possibly 4), and predominantly black with
white text - all lovingly designed in Swiss political poster
style by Warren Olds.

While I plan to personally fund the
initial print run of 500 for distribution in the Waikato and
Auckland, I know there are others who care about these
issues and may want to be involved in the project.

YOU CAN
FINANCIALLY SUPPORT THIS PROJECT BY BUYING COPIES of these
posters at $1 per poster (minimum of 20). This works out to
be roughly cost price for the printing.

Send an e-mail to
war@dannybutt.net
with the number of posters you want to buy. I will send an
invoice with the cost of postage added at the same time as
the posters.

YOU CAN ALSO PRINT YOUR OWN COPIES. We will
be making a complete Acrobat PDF file of the poster
available via the web later in the week. Reply to this
e-mail if you want to be notified when the file is
available. "Open Source" Freehand files will also be
available so you can add any events happening in your own
area (particularly for overseas users).

Any surplus funds
will be donated to Amnesty International (note: they have
not endorsed this project).

Even if you can't help
financially, please keep reading the sources listed in the
poster (as well as your own), and forwarding the information
to people who need it. As the war is truly a media event,
having wide ranging sources of information is critical.
Don't swallow anything without chewing (including
this).

Thanks for your patience and attention to this long
e-mail. I hope this finds you all safe and
well.

The media aren't giving us the full
story. The Rendon Group, a public relations firm in the US,
have a $US397,000 contract to help the Pentagon look good
while bombing Afghanistan. The four-month deal includes an
option to renew through most of 2002. Hope you're settled in
for a long, entertaining war on CNN. You won't need to be
too concerned about it getting depressing, because an Oct.
30 memo to CNN staff reminded them "not to focus excessively
on the casualties and hardships in Afghanistan that will
inevitably be a part of this war".

2) Cluster bombs from
US forces are killing children.

The organisation Human
Rights Watch has called on the United States to halt the use
of cluster bombs, noting that they create "unacceptable
civilian casualties before and after conflict". If ever a
weapon was designed specifically for acts of terrorism, this
is it. The exact "footprint," or landing area, of the 200
bomblets is difficult to control and 7% fail to explode.
Their chief advantage over other weapons is that they kill
more people. According to HRW, in the bombings of the remote
village of Thori on October 21st, 23 civilians died. Most of
them were young children. Over 2000 people have died in
Kuwait due to these bombs since the Gulf War ended - most of
them children.

The United States used cluster bombs for a
week before admitting to their use. The cluster bomblets are
yellow. The small food aid parcels being air-dropped are
yellow. Have you seen the picture of the Laotian toddler
with it's head and leg blown off after picking up a bomblet?
This is happening right now in Afghanistan. With your
government's full support.

3) Hospitals and refugee
trucks are being bombed

So far, U.S. bombs have directly
hit two warehouses of the Red Cross, which were clearly
marked with a red cross painted on a white background,
visible from the air. The U.S. has acknowledged
responsibility for the bombing of the Red Cross warehouses,
claiming that it had mistakenly believed that the buildings
were military storehouses. Smart work.

Humanitarian relief
agencies have been hit in air strikes on at least two other
occasions, halting what would have been the first OXFAM food
delivery into the famine-stricken Hazarajat district of
Afghanistan since September 11. The "precision bombing
campaign" is a farce.

4) The US are starving innocent
people

There are 7 to 8 million people in Afghanistan on
the verge of starvation. That was true before September
11th. They were surviving on international aid. On September
16th, the NY Times reported that the United States demanded
from Pakistan the elimination of truck convoys that provide
much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan's
civilian population.

Then, as a gesture of "humanitarian
support", the US government plans to drop a total of 500,000
packets of airline food (including plastic cutlery and
serviettes). That will still only add up to a single meal
for half a million people out of the several million in dire
need of food. Aid workers have condemned it as a cynical,
dangerous public-relations exercise. Remember that the
packets are yellow, just like the unexploded bomblets.
That's if the recipients don't step on land mines while
going to collect the food/bombs.

5) Those responsible for
Sept. 11 probably aren't even in Afghanistan

There is no
evidence linking Afghanistan, or indeed Osama bin Laden, to
the attacks of Sept. 11. Most experts think the organisers
were Islamic fundamentalists. Bush and Blair think it was
bin Laden. A former CIA director thinks it was Iraq. An
increasing number of Arabs believe it was Mossad, he Israeli
intelligence service. None of them have any proof. The
actual terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, who are friends of
the US and so have escaped the bombing for now.

George
Bush claims he doesn't need any proof, because Bin Laden is
a terrorist. But the Taliban have offered to have Bin Laden
tried in a neutral country. This isn't acceptable to the US,
so the bombings keep going. The Taliban are no-one's idea of
an acceptable government, but the US is making them look
more reasonable than they ever have.

6) The Northern
Alliance "freedom fighters" aren't exactly good guys.

The
US, Russia, and Iran have been aiding a rough coalition of
armed groups called the Northern Alliance. The Northern
Alliance's fighters are drawn mainly from ethnic minority
groups in Afghanistan who have been persecuted by the
Taliban. But their record is also a bloody one. Human Rights
Watch implicates the Northern Alliance in "indiscriminate
aerial bombardment and shelling, direct attacks on
civilians, summary executions, rape, persecution on the
basis of religion or ethnicity, the recruitment and use of
children as soldiers, and the use of antipersonnel
landmines." By now everyone knows that Osama bin Laden was
among the mujihadin recruited by the CIA to fight the
Soviets in Afghanistan. Meet the next generation.

7) The
war is illegal

The United Nations wasn't even asked to
mandate the air strikes. The "evidence" against the
terrorists was shared amongst friends in the "coalition".
After conferring, they announced that it didn't matter
whether or not the "evidence" would stand up in a court of
law. Of the 70 so-called points of evidence, only nine even
referred to the attacks on the World Trade Center, and those
points were conjectural. As Stan Goff notes, any 16-year old
with a liking for courtroom dramas could tear this story
apart like a two-dollar shirt.

Nothing can excuse or
justify an act of terrorism, whether it is committed by
religious fundamentalists, private militia, people's
resistance movements - or whether it's dressed up as a war
of retribution by a recognised government.

8) Oil is the
real reason for the continued bombing

US President George
Bush (Jr) and Vice-President Dick Cheney both made their
fortunes working in the US oil industry. Turkmenistan holds
enough oil and gas, experts say, to meet American energy
needs for the next 30 years (or a developing country's
energy requirements for a couple of centuries.) Stated US
policy goals regarding energy resources in this region
include "encouraging the construction of east-west pipelines
that do not transit Iran."

For some years now, an American
oil giant called Unocal has been negotiating with the
Taliban for permission to construct an oil pipeline through
Afghanistan to Pakistan and out to the Arabian sea. But they
say they have to wait until there is a government in
Afghanistan that is stable and friendly to US business
interests. In December 1997, a delegation of Taliban mullahs
travelled to America and even met US state department
officials and Unocal executives in Houston. At that time the
Taliban's taste for public executions and its treatment of
women were not made out to be the crimes against humanity
that they are now.

Few doubt that the US military presence
in the Gulf has little to do with its concern for human
rights and is almost entirely to do with its strategic
interest in oil.

For example: the covert US war
against Nicaragua left tens of thousands of people dead, and
the country ruined, perhaps beyond recovery. The US ignored
the World Court's orders to end the violence and make
reparations. The United States now stands as the only
country on record which has both been condemned by the World
Court for "unlawful use of force" (international terrorism)
and has vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on them
to observe international law.

10) This war won't
work

Defence experts at Australian National University
have already described the Afghanistan campaign as "having
ill-defined goals, and could last for years with no clear
exit strategy." (Sound familiar? Hint: starts with "V".)
Senior Pentagon experts have said that even if Bin Laden and
the Taliban are destroyed, thousands more could take their
place, and we will be even less safe than
before.

Retaliation is a trap. In a world that was
supposed to have learnt that the rule of law comes above
revenge, Bush appears to be heading for the very disaster
that Osama bin Laden has laid down for him. And the rest of
the West is blindly following - with each show of NZ support
for this war making us more of a target and endangering New
Zealanders at home and overseas.

What happened on
September 11 was a crime against humanity. Those responsible
need to be brought to justice, via every legal means
available. But bombing civilians in one of the poorest
countries on earth will not help. Every death in Afghanistan
should be added to, not counted against, the death toll from
terror.

This war is illegal, immoral, and it won't work.
STOP THE WAR!

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

1) Be informed, and
share information among your friends. Don't rely on your
local newspaper or the TV to give you the full
picture.

Find
your own media sources giving you information outside the
US-dominated syndicates that show up in our media. Share the
information you find with everyone you know. Most people who
support the war don't know the full details of what's
happening.

2) Fax or write to your MP! Tell them that
while you support efforts to end terrorism, the war needs to
stop.

3) Keep an ear out for further action!
Demonstrations and a national day of action on December 1st
planned. Watch this space for further
events.

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